Management for Engineers: Don't Be a 'Pointy-Haired Manager'

Almost every engineer knows about the "Pointy-Haired Manager" and other management stereotypes.

Management's responsibility is to organize resources and follow the course of action decided during the planning process. For most managers in most companies, the company's structure is a given, but deploying resources within a project team is generally within their control. They try to decide on the best way to assign the critical tasks and reduce unnecessary expenditure (time, money, physical assets, etc). Management determines the division of work to meet the project's needs.

Directing (leading) is the third function of management. This is where many of the Dilbert comics get their funniest material. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, says that the situations he lampoons come from real life examples. We can all think of examples of leadership failure, but it often is not funny. Management controls and supervises the actions of the staff. It takes a skillful manager to lead a team without real-world experience in doing the job of the team. The idea is to enable management to help employees by guiding them in the right direction to achieve the company's goals. Depending on the company, managers are to aid employees to achieve their personal or career goals. This requires motivation, communication, team dynamics, and leadership.

Control includes establishing performance standards, evaluation, and reporting of job performance. There are a great many approaches to employee evaluation, but the real determination is how the company performs rating and ranking. Some companies have a single "focal point" review process, while others perform reviews on anniversary dates. Both can work, but both can be subverted. For example, assume that you have an employee rating that says you perform above average. For most people, this would suggest that -- barring really bad corporate news -- their employment is secure. But that isn't always the case. For companies that rank employees, managers often have to develop a comprehensive list of employees according to their value to the company (rank). In this case, it is entirely possible for an above average performing employee to find themselves out of a job because their position wasn't sufficiently important to the company. Even worse, if you work for a weak or ineffective manager, you may find yourself a victim of the ranking process.

In contrast to planning, the controlling process is continuous. All levels of management take part in this function. Control is dynamic in nature. The idea is that management can anticipate future problems, adopt preventive measures, and make policy changes in a timely fashion.

At the end of the day, management can be a fun and exciting career path. Just don't be, or become, that "pointy-haired" guy!

Last but not least, in my previous column, I posed the following trivia question: "Long distance telephone calls were measured in minutes. How much did the first three minutes of a call cost between New York and London in 1927?" Several people wrote me to say, correctly, that the long distance call to London cost $75 for three minutes. Want a shocker? Convert that number to 2014 dollars.

Here's another trivia question for you. What was produced when sewing machines were first set up in a French factory in 1841?

@elizabethsimon It's a wise person to know when they have good management (someone here had a similar sentiment). It's becoming incerasingly difficult to find companies that embrace a strong technical ladder. Often, they are the product of an engineering founder and an undying dedication to engineering excellence.

Usuallyt they also have a general positive attitude towards all professionals.

@JeffL_2 I've had a fortunate career. My first introduction to management was for a smallish (100+_ person company) that the founders believed in training for those who had an interest. So, I took advantage of every opportunity to lear, regardless of the topic. Management was a foreign field to me, but having the chance to take workshops from Peter Drucker was too good to pass uip. My first management positions was premature and very difficult for me, but I learned more doing the job.

Several of the larger companies I've worked for had management training in teh late 70s, but it seems that many companies have cut those programs back heavily.

I suppose that I could take a pessimistic view of management, but I donlt. There are undoubtedly managers who make the "easy" decision that upper management may want.

Standing one's own ground as a manager is a test of their courage. Knuckle under and fire the experienced guy, and unless the starts align just right and the project completes without major issues, the project WILL become later and MORE expensive.

I'm very fortunate that I work for a company that generally has good managers, a good training program to grow more good managers and a technical track so that those like me who don't desire to go into managemnt are nor forced into it. This is also the only company I've worked for where I could see myself as a manager IF I had the desire and personality to do it.

The big difference at this company is the attitude of upper management in recognizing the contributions of more experienced engineers.

What bothers me is many companies openly refuse to consider having "tech track" careeer options anymore. Now I know I for one would make a lousy manager because I know my heart just isn't in it. But it doesn't keep me from wondering how a manager responds to an order from high up to "reduce headcount" and you just KNOW the intent is to cut total salaries, do you cut the most experienced (and generally highest-paid) FIRST, leaving yourself without the folks you need to make a technical success out of that next project? Then having done that if the next project is running into technical or schedule trouble don't you just blame the staff you're left with, don't they know that about you already? (And if you don't operate on that basis aren't you just putting your OWN job at risk?) I get the impression that a lot of the skills you need to have in order to flourish as a manager are diametrically the opposite of what you needed to be a great engineer in the first place, so why SHOULDN'T companies provide that "tech track", and then doesn't NOT having one admit that they aren't really seeking excellence in the first place (I don't mean at ANY price just a reasonable one)?

@zeeglen you've hit on an age-old problem for engineers. Everybody has a share in this one regardless of their position in the company. Most larger companies have a bifurcation in the carrer path for engineers: continue up the technical ladder or move onto the management ladder. But engineers who are often under-trained or glamorize management step onto the management track without careful thought to the future of their career. Often, good engineers are promoted into management (as opposed to continuing the technical ladder) because their management recognizes excellent engineering skills and presumes incorrectly that a great engineer will make a great manager. And the engineer owns a piece of the problem when they take the management position.

I'm sure that most engineers can think of a great engineer who crashed and burned as a manager because they weren't tempermentally suited for the job.

I worked with an engineer who was made an upper level manager in a small company. This fellow was a very skillful engineer capable of great designs. He accepted the ego-boosting promotion because it seemed like a logical carrer step. He wasn't a good maanager for several reasons, chief among them was lack of management training and being painfully introverted. Without training he hadn't learned how to do the new job. He failed at managing and his technical work product and decisions were disasterous.

Luckily for him he found a jon outside the company that moved him laterally and back onto the technical lader. He's much better suited for that path, but if he worked at it he could probably gain the skills to continue on the management ladder.

It may seem harsh, but it's the employee's job to dispassionately assess their skill level and future goals before accepting a management position. Sometimes an offer of a management position may become a lever to move up the technical ladder. To successfully negotiate such as move, you MUST dispassionately understand your strengths and weaknesses and have a cleat career path in mind.